[s-cars] Dodged another bullet or "Oh My!"

[Ingo Rautenberg]

Jim,

You meant here for the pics:

http://www.tdif.com/phpBB2/gallery2.php?g2_itemId=6179

Looks like they were all about to be sheared off.  Did you use any  
kind of lockdown washer on those bolts?

Ingo

On May 29, 2007, at 11:29 AM, s-car-list-request at audifans.com wrote:

> From: audijim at comcast.net
> Date: May 28, 2007 12:52:31 PM GMT-04:00
> To: s-car-list at audifans.com
> Subject: [s-cars] Dodged another bullet or "Oh My!"
>
>
> I have something to confess, my S4 is a problem child. Over the  
> past few weeks, I have been secretly stressing about a knock in my  
> engine. I would start the engine in the morning and get a horrible  
> knock sound what would go away as the engine warmed up. It was  
> getting worse, and this holiday weekend, I finally had time to take  
> a look at it. Actually, let me go back a week when I thought I had  
> it diagnosed as a serpentine belt tensioner pulley that had a bad  
> bearing. I ordered new stainless steel bearings from McMaster-Carr  
> and they arrived Friday (hell, I ordered them Friday and they were  
> waiting for me when I got home from work the same day! Unbelievably  
> fast) Side note: looking at the pulley, the bearing does not look  
> to be pressed in, it is riveted in place by the two halves of the  
> pulley. I have a spare serp tensioner and before I replaced any  
> bearing, I swapped on to the AAN, no change in knock sound! But  
> while I had the tensioner off, I put tension on the belt with my h
>  ands a
> nd I saw the serp belt pulley portion on the crank pulley move! I  
> found my knock! Some how, some way, the four bolts holding the  
> crank pulley to the crank's timing belt gear wore away and the serp  
> pulley started getting loose. When the tensioner was applying  
> tension to the serp belt, it was putting force on the pulley and  
> making a knock sound at the same time as RPM would on a single  
> cylinder. I had a spare crank balancer/pulley assembly and  
> installed. Check out the pictures on what I found. http:// 
> www.tdif.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1432#13621
>